


Keeping Time

by not_whelmed_yet



Series: CyWhirl Week [4]
Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, Angst, Fish out of Water, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Man Out of Time, hazy post-war setting
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-05
Updated: 2020-04-05
Packaged: 2021-03-01 05:21:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,555
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23489764
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/not_whelmed_yet/pseuds/not_whelmed_yet
Summary: The war is over and society is rebuilding itself. Whirl has rebuilt himself a civilian life and opened a chrono shop.Society is rebuilding itself and Cyclonus is millennia out of step. He comes into Whirl's shop looking for help with a broken chrono and Whirl offers himself up as Cyclonus's guide to the future.
Relationships: Cyclonus/Whirl (Transformers)
Series: CyWhirl Week [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1684027
Comments: 24
Kudos: 61
Collections: Lynn's Flashfiction & Oneshots





	Keeping Time

**Author's Note:**

> So theoretically this was supposed to be a 1750 word oneshot for day 5 of cywhirlweek. I was deceived. It tricked me into starting another cywhirl chapter-fic 😔
> 
> (but then again, if you're here you're probably not complaining at the thought of more cywhirl 😂)

Whirl was playing a little holo game with his feet up on the bench when the customer walked in. In his defense, he hadn’t been expecting any more customers - nobody had pinged him to make an appointment. Whirl craned his neck to peer out the front window and see if maybe it was raining. Sometimes a good acid storm would drive one or two loiterers into the shop but, no: the weather looked fine and the guy wasn’t dripping on Whirl’s floor.

The bot looked at Whirl, the little holo game still chiming away as the little asteroids exploded and zoomed around Whirl’s navship. The bot looked back at the door they’d just walked through, then back at Whirl. “Have I misread the shop hours?” He asked. _Wow, okay. Way to be passive aggressive._

Whirl waved his claw to dismiss the game. “Nah. You just forgot to call ahead and make an appointment. Whirl’s Chronos, at your service. I’m Whirl. You thinking of making an upgrade?” Whirl swung himself to his feet and sauntered over to the customer - _potential_ customer. Whirl offered them a claw.

The mech looked down at Whirl’s claw blankly. He had a real old-school look to him. Purple armor, big horns and a hole through his face Whirl could have fit a claw through. A twin set of clawmarks were gouged down his face from beneath each eye. They looked fresh. He didn’t look well.

“They tell me my chronometer is not functioning adequately,” he said. “And that I should find a chronoshop to have it repaired.”

“Well, mission accomplished, you have located a chronoshop!” Whirl decided to give up on the handshake and instead waved him towards the chairs in his little waiting area. “What’s your name?”

The mech ran his hand over the the back of the chair, like he wasn’t sure what to do with it. He watched Whirl as he sat down in the other seat, then lowered himself gingerly onto it. He folded his arms over his chest. “I am Cyclonus.”

“Cyclonus. Great.” Whirl nodded inanely. He was not good at smalltalk, but it was important to not say anything offensive to your customers before they paid you. “And what’s the trouble with your chronometer?”

Cyclonus frowned. “It doesn’t work.”

“At all? Like, you’re not getting any sense of how much time is passing, or what time it is? Nothing?”

Cyclonus shook his head. “Nothing since the war ended.”

“You do anything strenuous during that final battle?” Whirl asked. “Any explosive shockwaves, hard impacts, chest wounds in dusty conditions where something could have jammed the mechanism…”

Cyclonus frowned harder. “I...yes. All of those things.”

“Did a medic look at you? Nobody noticed you were having chrono problems?” Whirl demanded. Sure, the veterans council was hot slag on a good day, but missing a complete absence of chronometer function was a new low.

“A medic looked at me,” Cyclonus repeated. He sounded a little dazed. Maybe there was something wrong with his brain as well as his chrono. “They said I didn’t need fixing then, now they’ve changed their mind.”

“Yeah, yeah, I get you. Bureaucracy is a mess,” Whirl agreed. “Normally, I do a consult where we figure out what the problem is first. Sometimes I have to craft or order parts for a repair, if so I’ll send the customer home with a loaner. Repairs take between one and seven days, depending on my backlog and the complexity of the issues. Once it’s done, I call you and we schedule a time for you to have your chrono reinstalled. That sound okay with you?”

Cyclonus licked his lips. The shop clocks ticked.

Whirl practiced his breathing. He was working on ‘patience’ with Rung, it was the theme of their weekly sessions this month. But still, he broke before Cyclonus did. “Do you have a question about anything I just said?”

“Yes.” Cyclonus said. “How will you call me?”

“On your personal frequency?” The statement came out a question, as Cyclonus frowned even deeper. “I could send a memo to your mail account...or not. Um, how do people normally contact you?”

Cyclonus clenched his hands into fists. “This was a mistake,” he said. “I am wasting your time. My apologies.”

He moved to get up, but Whirl was faster. “Woah, woah, woah. You aren’t wasting anyone’s time, Hornhead. I was playing holo games because I was bored stiff - the shop isn’t exactly hopping right now. No reason not to stay and talk. Why don’t we just, uhhh, back up a bit. Who is this ‘they’ you keep talking about?”

Cyclonus shook his head. In frustration? Refusal to answer the question? That’d be a shame because more questions were bubbling up in Whirl’s brain module like he was a fizzy drink that had been left in the bubbler too long.

He tried to remember Rung’s advice about patience.

Eventually Cyclonus spoke, words grating out like he’d been given a word budget and he was counting down till he went bankrupt. “As terms of my release, I meet with a probation officer. To prove I’m not a _threat_.” The last word hissed out between his teeth (fangs really, not that Whirl was looking) and Whirl could suddenly imagine how a guy like Cyclonus could be a threat. Not to Whirl, of course, Whirl knew was he was about. But a lesser mech might have been frightened.

Okay, so the guy was probably a war criminal. Whirl didn’t personally know anybody who’d gotten locked up after the war, at least not after the Cons were mass-pardoned. But he assumed some of the worst ones must have gone to jail. He’d kinda tuned out of the news once the possibility of getting _the shop_ had appeared on the horizon.

Still, war criminals needed working chronometers if they were supposed to meet with their parole officers or whatever. “So, how do you contact them when you need to stay in touch?”

“I'm supposed to go to their office. If I don't, they come to my habsuite when they want to talk to me,” Cyclonus said.

“Alright, that works.” Whirl reached over for a datapad and a stylus. He powered on the screen and passed it to Cyclonus. “Just write down your address and I’ll come by once your chrono is ready.”

“I…” Cyclonus trailed off, looking at the stylus in his hand. “I don’t know if I can pay you.”

“Universal stipend, I can just pull it from your account,” Whirl said. Cyclonus stared at him like Whirl had suggested paying him by tipping over a vending machine at the heart of Vector Sigma. Whirl was getting very confused. “How are you paying for rent?” Whirl asked.

Cyclonus's optics flashing in frustration. “I told you I was wasting your time.”

Whirl was so confused. He was bathing in an endless pool of confusion, floating on a little floatie that was inflated with pure confusion, a little drink of confusion in his claw with a festive confusion-colored umbrella. “Look, the consult is always free. Why don’t I have a look and then at least you can tell your...officer person what’s wrong with your chrono when they complain at you?”

Cyclonus thought it over for another interminable silence, one that almost had Whirl breaking out his holo game again. But eventually he agreed - or at least he inclined his head in a generous approximation of a nod. Whirl was practically buzzing with curiosity, so he took that as a _yes_. People? People were slag at communicating. Chronos always told a story.

He guided Cyclonus over to the nice reclining berth in his workshop and dragged over his mag-viewer to get a few images and zero in on where Cycloonus’s chronometer was located relative to the rest of his internal bits and bobs. Cyclonus lay back, folding his hands over his chest and powering down his optics. He looked kinda peaceful and like a guy who really needed a nap, so Whirl didn’t interrupt him to ask about the really weird images he got out of the mag-viewer.

He could pick out the chrono alright, but he hadn’t seen a mech with a shoulder-placed timepiece in a couple million years. Back in his _last_ chronoshop.

Whirl tapped Cyclonus gently on the shoulder. “I’m going to open this plate up to get to your chrono. That okay?”

“Yes.”

Not a mech of many words, apparently. Whirl swung over his toolkit and got to work. He’d fastened little hooks on the end of all of his tools and then rigged a square of wire mesh into a frame intended to hold a movable magnifying glass; that way he could easily access any of his equipment. Working on chronos without hands was an exercise in _patience_ , as Rung would have said. A lot of small steps and specially modified equipment. But he could still do it.

Cyclonus didn’t gawk at Whirl’s ingenuity. He didn’t look at all, optics remaining placidly dark. Kinda nice. Whirl didn’t like being watched - he vastly preferred solo shoptime to customer time.

Whirl got the upper armor plate off, then located the access port in the shoulder joint below. The hinges were stuck, so Whirl had to finesse that a bit. And then they were onto the good stuff. The timepiece chamber. Whirl used a tool he’d invented - he called it the Extractor - to lift the chronometer up out of its housing. He hooked the Extractor onto his toolkit to hold the chrono steady while he used his long-pronged tweezers and a micro-circuitry kit to disconnect the neural hookups. Cyclonus really must not have been feeling his chrono, because he didn’t flinch when Whirl got it disconnected.

Whirl wheeled himself back over to his workbench to open up his prize. He clamped it down in the frame he used to position pieces, then carefully pried up the top plate. He set it aside and swung his magnifying glass down over the guts of the chronometer.

“What the everloving fuck?” Whirl spun his stool around to look at Cyclonus. “Why does your chronometer look like it came out the early chapters of a history-of-engineering textbook? Not the _really_ early chapters, because people hadn’t invented chronos yet but…” Whirl paused. “Are you asleep?”

No response. Apparently the guy really had needed a nap. That or he’d kicked it.

Whirl kept a medical diagnostic reader, for checking these kinds of things. But when he looked, he couldn’t find a diagnostic port anywhere on the guy. He also didn’t wake up while Whirl was poking around for one, which was a little worrying. Up close, Whirl could feel the heat coming off his spark, so he was definitely not dead. Just resting. Very, uh, thoroughly.

Whirl considered his options. Probably didn’t consider them long enough, because what he decided to do was pinch the guy’s nose and see if that woke him up. 

On the other hand - it totally worked. Cyclonus grabbed Whirl’s wrist, little red beads of light staring him down. “What are you doing?” he asked. It came out slurred with sleep, which made it a tad less intimidating.

“Making sure you’re not dead. And trying to figure out what the hell is going on. You okay?”

“I'm fine.” Cyclonus lapsed into silence again.

“Right. Say I don’t buy that. Let’s say there’s...something that could explain why you’re fainting in my shop.”

“I didn’t faint.” Cyclonus said.

“Sure. I’m sure you have equally convincing explanations for why your chronometer belongs in a museum and somebody forgot to install medical diagnostic ports when they did your last upgrade.” An idea popped into Whirl’s head and he grabbed a pressure gauge out of his toolkit. Don’t need a diagnostic port to take someone’s fuel pressure.

“I am fine,” Cyclonus protested, with all the strength of Rung trying to resist buying himself another modeling kit.

“Oh yeah, I’m sure you’re fine, just gonna use this to get a reading that backs up your totally-fineness…” The thing beeped and Whirl squinted to read the number off the viewer. “Okay, quick question. When did you last refuel?”

Cyclonus glared at him. “My chronometer isn’t working."

“Right. Right. Okay. Uh, well I think it’s been awhile. Because you seem to have gone empty.”

“Ah.”

“Ah,” Whirl repeated back. “I’ll go grab you something.”

One emergency booster and a bag of energon treats from the convenience shop next door later, Cyclonus lost that sleep-drunken haze Whirl had assumed was just part of his personality. The dour look on his face did not improve.

“So what are you doing starving yourself for?” Whirl asked.

Cyclonus glared at him. “I see little alternative,” he said.

“I’m so fucking confused,” Whirl muttered. “Just use your dispenser, like a normal person.”

Cyclonus opened his mouth to say something cryptic and fatalist, Whirl decided to cut him off.

“Look. Just tell me what’s going on and I’ll do my best to help you, okay? I’ve been in trouble with the law before,” he wiggled one claw in demonstration, “and I promise the current government is not into starving their political enemies. And if it is, I want to know about it so I can go get my gear out of storage before the revolution gets going.”

Reluctantly, Cyclonus laid out his life story in the sparsest of details.

His chrono looked like an antique because it was an antique. _He_ was an antique. He’d been on the Ark I when it disappeared, then got stuck in a hell dimension for 4 million years, then came back to destroy the planet, then had a change of heart and fought Galvatron. For some reason the planet fixed him when it reset everything else (except his chrono, but that wasn’t part of his original frame so it kinda made sense).

He went to jail with the Decepticons, then they got pardoned and he went to jail _without_ the Decepticons. And then he got released. No clue when any of those events happened, because the mech didn’t have a working chronometer.

They just...set him loose in a habsuite in a city that hadn’t existed when he was last on the planet. And apparently nobody considered the fact that, as an _antique_ he wouldn’t have access to the universal stipend or...a lot of other things...and Cyclonus was too damn proud to ask for help. So he’d just been sitting around his habsuite waiting to starve and missing his parole appointments.

Whirl was going to strangle someone. “That would have been a fucking stupid way to die, mate.”

Cyclonus shrugged. A gesture that screamed out for help, if you were paying even the slightest bit of attention. The sort of gesture that screamed _hey, maybe people who are trapped in hell dimensions might need therapy_.

“It’s a damn good future, you know,” Whirl said. “You just haven’t gotten to see it yet. Come on home with me, I know at least one thing that hasn’t changed in four million years. We still have great engex. You could use a drink.”

Cyclonus snorted. “I am doubtful it’s _great_ engex. The swill they brew up in the northern cities is barely worth cleaning a blade with. But on the other hand...you’re right, I could use a drink.”

**Author's Note:**

> As always with my one-day ficlets, there's probably typos and grammar things I missed (feel free to point me at any mistakes you notice)
> 
> As always, I love comments and you can find me online @notwhelmedyet. Thank you for reading and I hope you enjoyed 💕


End file.
